Firstly, define racism, then define how it is that people of colour would have issues with  not just Euro-Americans but each other.   The genisis of all of this is White racism.    There is no equal ground here.   I’m assuming that  you  are not  a dark skinned person with  tightly curled hair, so while you  have the liberty of  speaking of the "changes", I still get stopped on teh street for absolutely no other reason other than institutional White biases manifested as state power.  Don’t forget that Bill Clinton signed the "New Crime Bill", a federal law that not only permits but encourages racial profiling.  The state of New Jersey has successfully defended its official racism in federal court under these guidelines.

As far as West Indian Africans and their bias towards Americanised African people, they have retained an innate sense of  African indentity, the problem with American Africans is the fact that we are so "American".  They know innately who they are, we do not.  It has been beaten and taught out of us since day one.  On the other hand, their experience with European colonialism was done primarily under the watch of British appointed overseers who looked like them.  The White government administrators were not on the streets bashing them but in the closed environment of the establishment.  They saw African police, teachers and managers, we saw the Klan and the White citizens councils whose members taught in our schools, when we allowed to go to school, policed our streets and judged us with the full weight of theWhite establishment backing them up.

It is a severe mistake to approach this issue and the root issue of European colonialism as a matter of equals with simple ignorace and bigotry behind them.  If White Americans have no problem seeing the historical facts behind South Africa’s history, it is pure cowardice to apply the illusion that this is a quarrel between rivals of equal standing.  There was never ethnic/racial equality in the Americas under the colonialist pardigm, and White America if it at all serious must bite the bullet and admit the realtiy of how we all got to this point.  Europe came here, killed off the Aboriginal population and imported African labour to build the country economically.  Arguments that "It’s just stupid hate" purposefully miss the point.  It divorces responsibility for the maintenence of everyday White racism by everyday White people who are told since birth that they have an deity-given social power that trumps the humanity of other, non-European human beings and that it not only a way to thinjk but a way to be because of the lie that the world has always been this way and that if the Christian God wasnted it different, he, or she, would have made things differently.  Racism is not hate, its a system of entitlement accorded to one group over another under the excuse of difference.  And until the U.S. can look at itself honestly and stop accusing the victims of racism for the existence of racism itself, nothing will change.  And as we are witnessing, my newfound, historically  speaking,  "rights"  on walking down a city road populated  by White people  is not progress,  healing the multileveled and co-existing wounds  caused by White colonialist racism is on the other hand progressive.  Anti-racism has been reduced to soundbites that mean nothing.  If it did, my world and yours would look much differently than they do now.  And the other sad fact that Aboriginals are not even a factor in these debates is the biggest insult.  All of this hassle and quarrel in lands that factually do not even belong to non-Natives more than any other factor muddies what really is being discussed.  Especially when I am forced to sit and listen to White folks willing to go to jail over Tibetan genocide when the exact same genocidal conditions are part and parcel of the American pardigm.

The whole thing is pretty depressing.

should have spellchecked before I posted that.

Oh…there ARE differences in the levels depending on where you are. I’ve luived on the East coast, West Coast, the South. There ARE different levels. New York and New Jersey were the type of places you’d think it would be less prominant. But, that’s not the case. There were neighborhoods where whoites couldn’t go…and places where black people couldn’t go…and where Puerto Rican people couldn’t go, etc.

I’m 50 years old. So, I was around when there was REAL segregation. I’ve seen improvements here and there. There are many black racists too! (reverse racism) There’s even predjudice within the communities themselves.

I have soem Jamaiican friends who are black. But, they can’t stand American blacks. It’s all pretty ridiculous.

I keep hoping we can get past this bull****. But, it seems unlikely it’ll happen any time soon.

I’m talking about Seattle, the land of Microsoft, biotech and the corporate latte.  Traditional American racism is just that, traditionally American.  No matter where you are in the country.

I’ve heard the same. But, I’m in Texas.Let’s hope these people aren’t representative of the whole.

I can tell you all from personal experience with registered voters in Washington State that Euro=-American members of the democratic party  are openly discussing  voting for McCain if Obama wins the party nomination.  When I asked several individuals in private why they would even consider making such a move, two told me without reservation and visible defiance that they were in the end, not willing to vote away their White Privilege.  Polls do little but muddy where this discussion should be centred.